Longform Longform

Peggy Orenstein is a journalist and author. Her latest book is Unraveling.
“The challenge is… to not want to say, I need to know what the book is about. I need to have my chapters. I need to know what exactly I'm looking for. Because it's really scary to just go out and report and have trust that there's going to be interesting things and that if you just keep going, you're going to find them. So to not foreclose possibility and options and ideas is the biggest reporting challenge for those sorts of books for me.”
Show notes:

@peggyorenstein

peggyorenstein.com

01:00Girls & Sex (Harper • 2016)

01:00 Boys & Sex (Harper • 2020)

01:00 Cinderella Ate My Daughter (Harper • 2012)

01:00 Waiting for Daisy (Bloomsbury • 2007)

01:00 Unraveling (Harper • 2023)

14:00 Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky • Penguin Books • 2003)

18:00 "Mourning My Miscarriage" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2002)

21:00 Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap (Anchor • 1995)

25:00 "Champion of the Deep" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 1991)

37:00 Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott • Anchor • 1995)

47:00 Aftersun (A24 • 2022)


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Jonathan Goldstein is an audio producer and the host of Heavyweight.
“I wasn’t taking myself very seriously, initially. I liked working with my friends and family because I think I was a little more comfortable with them. Then in the second season people were writing in with real problems, and they were looking at me as a kind of expert. It was terrifying to meet with these people and see the look of hopefulness in their eyes. ... I realized I need to step it up and even if I didn’t feel like an expert—an expert in an invented field that doesn’t really exist—that I’d really have to take that on with seriousness.”
Show notes:

@J_Goldstein

Goldstein’s Heavyweight archive

02:00 "Plan B" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Feb 2002)

10:00 Goldstein’s This American Life archive


14:00 Lenny Bruce is Dead (Counterpoint Press • 2006)

16:00 "I Know What You Did This Summer" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Aug 2001)

17:00 "Other People’s Problems" (Jonathan Goldstein • CBC • Sept 2020)

19:00Goldstein’s Wiretap archive, selected and republished by the CBC


23:00 "What I Should’ve Said" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2004)

23:00 "Recordings for Someone" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2002)

26:00 "Buzz" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Sept 2016)

31:00 "The Elliotts" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Dec 2022)

33:00 "Justine" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Oct 2021)

33:00 "Stephen" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Oct 2021)

37:00 "Dr. Muller" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Nov 2019)

43:00 "Another Roadside Attraction" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Nov 2022)


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Katy Vine is an executive editor for Texas Monthly.
“This is a huge state. There’s so much, and it’s different everywhere you look. You just go to Houston and there’s worlds within worlds within worlds just within the one city. You go to San Antonio and you’re in a different country, and you go to Dallas, you’re in a totally different country. … It’s wild to me. It’s endlessly fascinating.”
Show notes:

@Katy_Vine

Vine on Longform

Vine’s Texas Monthly archive

07:00 "Family Circus" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2002)

16:00 "Just Desserts" (Texas Monthly • Jan 2016)

20:00 "The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen" (Texas Monthly • Sep 2020)

23:00 "Plenty of Ammo" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2001)


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Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award.
”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of covering in general. It's not a matter of like, they shaped it in this way. The problem, I think, it’s bigger. How this industry is working, how this industry is deciding what they should cover.”
Show notes:

@khabat_abas

Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism

34:00 "'Belief Allows Us to Move Forward,' Said One Female Soldier in Battle Against ISIS" (ABC News • July 2017)

40:00 "The Former 'Caliphate Capital' Is Haunted by Fears of an ISIS Comeback" (Washington Post • May 2020)

43:00 "How ISIS Women and Their Children Are Being Left Stranded in the Desert" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)

43:00 "ISIS at a Crossroads" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)

43:00 "After the ISIS Caliphate: Thousands of Islamic State Fighters Captured in Syria Face Uncertain Fate" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)

51:00 "'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': A Dispatch from Kurdish Syria" (New York Review of Books • Oct 2019)

51:00 "For Kurds on the Syrian Front Line There’s No Ceasefire" (The Daily Beast • Nov 2019)


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Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosopher and journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The Verge, The Believer and many other publications. Her new book is Easy Beauty.
”I literally didn't talk to anyone in my life about disability until I was, like, 30. Ever. Not my husband, not my friends, as little as possible to my own mother. I had this very bad idea that what I needed to do in every single social situation was wait until people could unsee my body…. And it was all in service of trying to be truly recognized or truly seen. And, of course, what was happening is I was involved in a complete act of self erasure because my body and my real self are related…. There is no real me without my physical self…. I did not think I was going to ever write about this, but once I started, it felt like I met myself for the first time.”
Show notes:

@CCooperJones

chloecooperjones.com

 Cooper Jones on Longform

00:00 Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster • 2022)

01:00 "Fearing for His Life" (The Verge • Mar 2019)

02:00 "Contemplating Beauty in a Disabled Body" (New York Times Magazine • Mar 2022)

19:00 "Such Perfection" (The Believer • Jun 2019)


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David Wolman is the author of six books and a magazine features writer who has written for Wired, Outside, and The New York Times. His latest article is ”Vanished in the Pacific.”
“I feel like conversations about characters, character development, strong characters gets a little nauseating in my field sometimes because it’s like, of course — you need that like you need periods at the ends of sentences. Do we really have to keep saying it? But in this conversation it’s worth saying, because there are great ideas out there where the sources or the characters just really weren't there and then you’re tucking your tail in between your legs to look for the next one.”
Show notes:

@davidwolman

david-wolman.com

03:00 Aloha Rodeo (Wolman and Julian Smith • Harpers Collins • 2020)

09:00 "The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn't a Crook—He's an Artist" (Wired • May 2012)

13:00 "The Cold War" (Wolman and Julian Smith • Epic Magazine • Sept 2015)

21:00 Atellan Media


31:00 The End of Money (Da Capo • 2013)


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